Teams are writing more code than ever, but fewer are shipping it. See the 5 key findings from 28M+ workflows in the 2026 State of Software Delivery.

Circle is a platform for developers and software teams to collaborate, share knowledge, and streamline their development workflows, offering tools and integrations for code review, continuous integration, and project management. Developers can learn about modern development practices, agile methodologies, and DevOps principles to improve collaboration, increase productivity, and deliver high-quality software efficiently.

CircleCI

Analysis of 28M+ CI/CD workflows from CircleCI's 2026 State of Software Delivery report reveals a widening gap between code generation and code shipping. Average workflow throughput jumped 59% year-over-year, but gains are heavily concentrated in the top 5% of teams. For the median team, feature branch activity grew 15% while main branch throughput fell 7%, indicating AI is creating a delivery bottleneck at review, validation, and integration stages. Main branch success rates dropped to a five-year low of 70.8%, and recovery times climbed to 72 minutes. Mid-sized companies (21–50 employees) are hit hardest, with the lowest throughput and recovery times approaching three hours. Top-performing teams succeed by investing in faster feedback loops, smarter test selection, and adaptive pipeline infrastructure rather than just accelerating code generation.

5 key takeaways from the 2026 State of Software Delivery: Why AI isn’t shipping faster

1. Average throughput jumped 59%, but almost all of it went to the top

2. Teams can write faster, but they can’t ship faster

3. AI-generated code breaks more often and takes longer to fix

4. Fewer than 1 in 20 teams have figured out how to ship at AI speed

5. Mid-sized companies are stuck in the “messy middle”